‘AIB decision is costing me €500 a month’

GARETH Murphy is unable to get AIB to agree to put him on the right tracker rate.

A married father of two young boys, he reckons the failure of AIB to put him on the tracker rate he says he is entitled to is costing him €500 a month.

He bought an apartment in 2007, but has since moved out and is renting a larger home for his family.

“I moved out in 2011 and we are renting. The failure of AIB to offer me the correct tracker rate is costing us €500 a month. We can’t afford to save for a deposit for a house,” he says.

Mr Murphy, who is a lawyer in a Dublin software company, bought an apartment in south Dublin in 2005 and re-mortgaged in 2007 with a top-up additional mortgage to buy out his girlfriend after their relationship broke up.

Both loans were on a tracker interest rate set at a 1.1pc margin over the European Central Bank (ECB) rate.

He opted to go on a tracker rate on one loan and a fixed rate for four months on the other loan, after which (in September 2007) he was offered a 1.1pc tracker margin, but he opted to fix for three years.

After the drop in the ECB rate following the crash, he broke out of the fixed rate in 2008 – but was told by the bank he was not entitled to go to the low-margin tracker.

By 2011 AIB’s variable rates had reached 4.75pc, so he fixed again for three years.

When this ended in 2014, AIB said he could go back to a tracker, but at a margin of 4.91pc over the ECB rate.

He wrote to the bank in March last year when he heard that AIB was setting aside €190m to deal with tracker cases.

But the bank would not put him on a tracker at a 1.1pc margin.

He appealed to the Central Bank.

He is now hoping that the Central Bank can force the lender to put him on his good value tracker, so he and his family can get the funds together to buy a home.

But for now the fight goes on, he said.